One of the rarest seabirds in the world, the Chinese Crested Tern (Thalasseus bernsteini), has been spotted again in the sea waters of the northern part of Seram Island, Maluku. Monitoring was carried out by a joint team consisting of Burung Indonesia, The Office of Natural Resources Conservation in Maluku, BirdLife International Asia, Indonesian Bird Banding Scheme-Indonesian Institute of Sciences, and in coordination with other related partners since 14 February 2019. In addition to monitoring the existence of this species, the team tried to attach a satellite belt so that the movement of these migrating birds from the northern hemisphere of the Earth could be detected. However, until the last day of monitoring, which was on Monday, 18 February 2019, the tagging was not successful.
Although they didn’t manage to capture the Chinese Crested Tern and attach satellite belts to any of them, the team got three Greater Crested Tern (Thalasseus bergii), marked them with ring tags and put satellite belts on two of them. In addition, two birds which were tagged during the monitoring operation in 2018 were also under observation.
"The information monitored from the satellite provides new data and information to determine the movement of the Greater Crested Terns moving around the Seram Island area to northern Australia," said Biodiversity Conservation Specialist of Burung Indonesia, Ferry Hasudungan, in Ambon on Tuesday, 19 February 2018.
The efforts to tag and put on satellite belts on Greater Crested Terns not only aimed to discover their migratory flyway and locate the Chinese Crested Terns, but also to promote the conservation of seabirds in Indonesia. The number of remaining Chinese terns is currently estimated to be less than 100 individuals. This species is believed to spend the winter migrating to a number of countries in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. Currently, the only place in Indonesia that is known to be the migration area of Chinese Crested Tern is in the waters of the northern part of Seram Island.
“We hope that we can see where these birds migrate, especially in the territory of Indonesia, so that in the future, hopefully we can see locations in Indonesian waters that are important for Chinese Crested Terns,” he added.
Indonesia has a very rich diversity of seabirds and is an important habitat for this group of birds. Not only inhabitant birds, but also migratory birds from northern and southern hemispheres.